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Pangaea Borneo Project – 20110118: Day 4

With a start I wake up, the boats moving!!! I overslept is my first thought, but as I start moving around on the boat I see that only some of the young explorers are awake. Mike had decided to up anchor and leave Kudat (at the northern tip of Borneo) before the sun broke the horizon, our heading Billean Island.

Everyone is refreshed and ready for the day after last night’s excellent meal in Kudat and Matthew supplying some good entertainment.

We sail till late morning dropping anchor close to the island were in late 2009 the last group of Malaysian YEP’s  did their beach cleanup. We don our swimsuits and second skins and take to the water. Andre and Christian put the seabobs in the water; we make a 4 man train behind each of them and head for the island. What a great feeling to be standing were 8 other young explorers were standing just over a year ago!

We spend the next 2 hours clearing the island of all rubbish, it’s quite worrying to see how many plastic bottles and pieces of Styrofoam were found washed up on the beach.

Most of us see our first live sea snake and we are lucky enough to find 3 on the island. They are one of the most venomous snakes on the planet but luckily they have small back fangs and are not very aggressive.

Using the seabobs and a local Malaysian fishing vessel we get all the rubbish back to Pangaea. Ready to be later recycled.

We leave the island behind and reset our sails for Billean Island which we reach just after dark. Mike decides a night dive is in order 5 of us jump with great excitement into our gear and with some worried faces we get into the water.  Apart from a few small fish, silt and Leonard’s antics we didn’t see very much but it was an awesome experience and we can’t wait for tomorrow…
 

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